


Helping Hand

by orphan_account



Category: AFI
Genre: Broken Bones, Frat House era, Hardcore hurt/comfort, M/M, Playing Doctor, dirty punk babies, hardcore shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:16:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Davey breaks his thumb, and can’t undress himself. Jade is willing to lend a helping hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helping Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of many stories written a genre I invented and dubbed "Hardcore hurt/comfort." It involves one character (usually Davey) getting injured at a hardcore show, and the other character (usually Jade) acting weird about it. It usually results in sex. It's an excuse for me to write the word "dude" as much as possible and sank over shows. I broke my thumb at a Ceremony show once, and had to be undressed for two days by my friend...that event spawned the creation of this particular hxc h/c story. It never happened to Davey or Jade, though, neither of which I own.

At the Sick of it All show in Petaluma that night, Davey broke this thumb. Or more accurately, Davey didn’t break his thumb, but some stupid fat ass stage diver that plowed him over more certainly did. One second Davey was getting jostled between hundreds of sweaty bodies, banging his head and vaguely aware that Jade was somewhere to his left, and the next second his world smelled like cheap, spilled beer and he was flat on his back, searing pain shooting from his hand to his elbow. 

There was a guy on his chest, some gangly looking kid whose limbs were arranged in an impressive mess all over the beer slicked floor and Davey’s winded, newly bruised body. “Dude, get off me” Davey mumbled to the kid, slapping his back in what he hoped was a good natured way. People were stepping on him, and there was this horrendous, _something is definitely wrong_ kind of pain in his thumb, so he really wanted to be upright again to prevent anything else happening to his throbbing, swelling digit.

Jade was swimming over him in a split second, his flushed sweaty face appearing between the forest of mostly hairy, mostly tattooed legs Davey’s world had been reduced to. Jade hauled the kid to his feet, followed by Davey who he dragged into his chest once he was standing again. “You okay?!” he shouted in his ear, deafening him as a finger of sound wormed its way into Davey’s brain like someone had just shoved a pair of scissors in there, stabbing mercilessly. He cringed. “Yeah,” he responded, shrugging. He was getting knocked around, compressed and elbowed by the stifling weight of so many guys all striving and surging towards the stage, yelling in this raw, primal punk rock show way. Separating from Jade was inevitable, so he shook the stiffness of getting knocked over off, tossing his head a little to get the ringing out, and holding his injured hand close to his body in a protective curl. 

Whenever Davey got hurt at a show, it was usually minor enough he could ignore it for the remainder of the band’s set. It took a lot to get him out of the pit. He kept this in mind, digging his nails into the skin of his wrist to distract himself from the hot, pressurized pain building in his joint. It would be over in due time, so he could suck it up. He threw himself forwards into the wall of flesh in front of him and screamed the lyrics of _Rat Pack_ right back at the band. It was in the back of his mind that this was more than just a bruise or a black eye or a bloody nose, which were his usual concert-injuries. Regardless, he wasn’t leaving the pit, so there was pretty much nothing he could do about it aside from pretend it didn’t happen. 

Two songs later he had forgotten about it, his sweat-slick body now flush with Jade’s, too hot and sticky in this way that made him reckless, hands open palmed and mauling all across Jade’s ribs and back. Touching Jade usually made Davey feel guilty; he had ill intentions that Jade was completely oblivious to, and there wasn’t really anything to feel _but_ guilt in a circumstance like that. Shows dissipated the shame though, shows provided a perfectly acceptable environment for Davey’s hands, no matter how wounded or broken they currently were, to do whatever they damn pleased in regards to Jade’s body. Therefore, two songs following the stage diver knocking Davey to his ass, the lack of pain concerning his ill intentioned, searching hands overcame the very real pain in his thumb, and he forgot about it entirely. 

~*~

The thumb became an immediate issue again once Davey and Jade were in the car on the way home. Davey wasn’t allowed to drive, in fact he had been forbidden to partake in the activity entirely since he totaled his last car. Instead he was slumped in the passenger side, his shirt reduced to this stretched-out soaking wet thing, heavy with other people’s booze and sweat. The windows were rolled down so he should have been cooling down, but much to his sudden awareness, he was generating a shit ton of unexplained heat. Namely, heat from the skin of his thumb, wrist, and palm, which felt red-hot and swollen to the touch. 

He could feel his heartbeat in the joint and this alarmed him, because it reminded him of the way a boner felt: swollen. Hard. Blood filled. He didn’t think a boner in this thumb was normal. Holding his hand up, he realized that completely unbeknownst to him, his thumb had grown from a thumb to this hideous black purple red sausage that was eating the rest of his hand. He tried to move it. He swore. 

“What are you bitching about?” Jade said fondly, sprawled behind the wheel and steering lazily. They were on the freeway and it was essentially empty so Jade was speeding, a cold wind pushing through the sweat-stiff mess that was his hair, flattening it against his brow. 

“Dude,” Davey said in awe, regarding his vibrantly colored, clearly fucked up hand. “I think I broke my thumb.” 

“Broke it? Sprained it maybe, but I doubt you _broke_ it,” Jade mused, most likely taking Davey’s tendency to embellish into account. His eyes were on the road but he held out his hand, letting the back of it rest on Davey’s thigh. “Lemme see,” he asked, voice not entirely free of a patronizing tone. Davey rolled his eyes as he gingerly dropped his swollen-ass hand into Jade’s palm. 

Jade’s eyes darted to Davey’s lap, and his jaw dropped, clearly aghast. Davey took personal triumph in the way Jade’s face so blatantly demonstrated his disgust at what had become of Davey’s poor, shattered appendage. “Oh shit,” Jade managed to say, poking at it a little and swerving his shitty truck a into the adjacent lane. “Maybe you’re right.” 

“No shit I’m right, I can’t even fucking _move_ it. I think it’s dislocated,” Davey didn’t sound broken up about this. In fact, he sounded downright proud of himself. He beamed at Jade, cheeks shiny red apples through the interruption of his entirely melted, wet-noodle hair. When Davey’s mohawk was down and wet, it shrunk so considerably that it made his head look abnormally small. He was usually so self conscious about this fact that he ruffled the hell out of it in order to bring some semblance of volume back to the thing, but he was so overwhelmingly involved in his new malady that he didn’t even think about it, just left the weak, deflated hair stick to his head, shrinking him. Jade must not have noticed it either, otherwise he would have ridden him about it, made a few jokes about the way persian cats lost all their dignity when wet. He loved to give Davey shit about looking like a wet cat, but he seemed to be too involved with the newfound volume in Davey’s thumb joint to comment on the lack thereof in his hair, too. 

“How the hell did that happen? Did you hit the floor when you stage dove?” Jade sounded so incredulous, his already big brown eyes bigger and browner than usual. It gave him the distinct appearance of a puppy, one whose body and skull hadn’t grown to accommodate the size of his eyeballs. The puffy cheeks didn’t help, nor did the way they were flushed, and all of this made Jade look no older than fifteen and that must have made Davey a pervert or something, because he really, badly wanted to kiss him. Bite him. Smack him in the face. 

“No, it was when that stage diver hit me! My hands were up and I think he caught my thumb on the way down...no fuckin’ idea, dude, but whatever it was it definitely broke it.” Davey stared at his hand while he explained this, fascinated with how hot and tender it looked. The more his show-high wore off, the more it hurt. 

“Dave! That was...that was like three songs into the set. You had a broken thumb for the _duration_ of the show?! You _stage dove_ with a broken thumb?!” Jade was getting maternal. It freaked Davey out. There had been a few instances in which Davey did something stupid or broke something or otherwise injured himself, and Jade always got _fussy_ and fussed over him like a goddamn babysitter or something. It would have made Davey happy, seeing as he generally craved Jade’s attention, but on the contrary it confirmed the deep rooted suspicion Davey harbored concerning Jade’s regard for him being... _brotherly_. Which was almost worse than indifference, because he cared but not in the right way. Davey retaliated by rejecting his maternal efforts, much in the fashion of a teenager rebelling. 

“Oh come on! I didn’t think it was that serious. Plus, I had all this adrenaline. It didn’t actually start hurting until now,” He half lied. Jade’s gaze flitted nervously to him, studious and calculating. He looked like he was partially impressed, but the stick up his ass made it difficult for him to submit to his bro-ish need to compliment Davey on his hardcoreness or whatever. Davey couldn’t tell, reading Jade was never one of his strong points. 

“You’re a dumb piece of shit,” Jade sighed after awhile, flipping his turn signal on with a freakishly long pinky. “But I guess you’re tough.” His face was cast in broken shadows half illuminated by street lights, and Davey swallowed the nasty, pissed off fifteen-year-old type shit he was about to spew. 

He settled back in his chair as Jade took the exit, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. “You’re gonna need to ice that when we get home,” he said, elbowing Davey’s bicep across the divide between the two seats. In that moment he managed to see that Davey’s seat belt was unfastened, and jumped right back to stage 10 of Concerned Mother. “Dude, your belt is undone.” 

“So?” Davey shrugged. “We’re like five minutes from home.” 

“I don’t care, put your seatbelt on.” Jade bitched, and Davey rolled his eyes, using his injured hand to reach for and grip the nylon belt. Incidentally, he yelped. “I _can’t_ my hand is broken,” he snorted, laughing through his nose, chunks of bottle black, dilapidated mohawk falling in jagged dark shapes across his still flushed face. Jade’s expression was mostly stern, but he started laughing too, rolling jerkily to a stop at a streetlight. “Dave, you really fucked yourself up good this time,” he said bemusedly. 

Jade then proceeded to abandon the wheel and reach towards the seatbelt, which hung dejectedly to Davey’s right, moving across Davey to do his goddamn seat belt for him because apparently, Davey’s one working arm wasn’t good enough for the job. His own arm was all in Davey’s face, copper hairs glinting especially bright in the glow of the red street light, all his freckles centimeters away from Davey’s mouth as he fiddled with the belt. Davey could smell his dried sweat, sharp and spicy through his deodorant. He wanted to make a really ugly awful unattractive sound to express how tight the knot beneath his lungs became after this really unfortunate new turn of events; but then Jade was gone, leaning back to his side of the car as he snapped the belt in. Just in time, too, because the light turned green. 

“This is kind of humiliating,” Davey admitted, favoring his now impossibly painful thumb. He winced, using his good hand to rake the hair off his forehead, tuck the longest parts behind his ear. His stomach was starting to turn at how badly it hurt at this point, a low, tightly coiled nausea unfurling. 

“You shoulda left the pit when it happened. You probably aggravated the hell out of it,” Jade explained, reaching into Davey’s lap infuriatingly and gripping his wrist, squeezing it gently but not gently enough. 

“Fuck dude! That hurts like a motherfucker,” Davey yipped, snatching his hand back defensively and clutching it to his chest like it weren’t something attached to his body. Jade held his own, perfectly not-broken hands up in surrender, flinching away. “Sorry, sorry.” 

Davey grumbled, curling into a ball, but he was secretly smiling against the lightly fogged up window. His thumb might have been in terrible pain, and he might have been in danger of puking in the near future, but he’d seen Sick of It All with Jade, and it was going to take more than a snapped bone or popped out joint to put a damper on an otherwise quite ideal evening. 

~*~

The world was trying really hard to ruin Davey’s night, apparently. Upon arriving at the house and letting themselves in as unobtrusively as possible through the back door as to not wake the numerous other occupants of the house, Davey and Jade discovered the freezer to be completely, ironically devoid of ice. “No ice?! Who doesn’t have ice?” Davey hissed, holding up the frostbitten, decidedly empty ice tray some dumb shit had replaced in the freezer without refilling. 

“Lame...” Jade responded, rooting around in the freezer for a suitable replacement. He came up with a half empty, rubber band-bound bag of frozen peas. “Here.” He announced, handing it to Davey who raised a suspicious eyebrow before grudgingly taking it and pressing it to his hideously swollen thumb. 

“Fuckkk,” he swore, and low and long growling sound. His stomach wrenched away from its usual place in his body cavity. 

“Does it hurt?” Jade asked in this concerned tone, his eyes getting all big and awful and life threatening again. Davey bared his teeth at him, distantly glad for the fact he could disguise it as a grimace of pain instead of Jade Frustration, which was an entire genre in and of itself in terms of frustration. 

“Fuck yeah it hurts. It’s _broken._ ” Davey snapped. He wanted to hop up onto the kitchen counter and sit there like he usually did, but that required leverage from both hands and he didn’t want to have to ask Jade for a goddamn _boost_ , so he just leaned against the fridge instead, huffing air from his lungs. 

“Let me see,” Jade said gently, holding his hands out like Davey were some little bird he was offering a palmful of seed. Davey extended his hand reluctantly, now fully aware of how awful his hair and clothing smelled, still smoke and booze infused from the venue. Jade smelled just as bad, but somehow bad smells were obnoxiously charming on Jade, just in the same way he made terrible hair cuts and dumbass psychobilly shoes endearing. There were a lot of things that Davey couldn’t stand about other people, but if Jade did them it, they just got added to the extensive list of attractive features Jade harbored which Davey resented him for.   
 Jade examined his hand carefully, brow knit with concentration and he ran his fingers delicately over the swollen, discolored flesh. Davey gritted his teeth against the pain, instinctually wanting to rip his hand away and whimper a lot but trying to retain the semblance of being what he supposed Jade had referred to as “tough.” After a few inexplicably loaded seconds of Jade touching Davey in this strange, clinical but still lingering, most likely _brotherly_ way, Jade declared, “It’s definitely dislocated. I think we should pop it back in the socket, then set it with a splint.” 

“Pop it back _in_? Shouldn’t I go to the hospital so they can do that?” There was a note of wheezing panic in his voice, but he tried to keep it together. He knew the he wouldn't go to the hospital, regardless of how fucked up any of his appendages were. He was flat broke; they all were. If every the occupant of the sizable frat house they shared were to put their cash down on the table, they might have enough to buy a very nice four course meal, or a third of a car. Everyone tried to keep expensive things like hospital visits down to a minimum, especially if it was something easy, like popping a joint back in. 

Regardless, Davey was sort of petrified over the idea of Jade handling his medical needs. 

“It’ll be fine. I mean it’ll hurt like a fucker for a few seconds, but then it will be back where it’s supposed to be,” Jade tried to assure him.

“I’ll scream my head off, dude. I’ll wake up the whole house.” 

“Do you want to use your hand in the morning?” Jade said with this _tone_ that made Davey helplessly picture him wearing a pink frilly apron, holding a wooden spoon and crossing his arms. Maybe a foot stamp was in there too, but Davey banished the image of Mom Jade out of his head so quickly he couldn’t be bothered with details. 

“Ok, _mother_ , jeez,” Davey griped, holding his hand out again. The familiar after show soreness he was used to was creeping into his limbs, making his knees ache from stage diving and not being caught entirely, his triceps stiff from holding his own arms up for so long and pushing beefy guys back into the circle pit. These sensations were usually satisfying and borderline welcome, but coupled with his broken thumb and his Jade Frustration, Davey just wanted to curl up in bed and forget about it. 

Jade took his hand, and Davey inhaled raggedly, feeling his bruised lungs expand in an aching, bruised chest. As Jade gently massaged the surrounding flesh around the joint, (much to Davey’s displeasure), Davey decided that it was in his best interest to shove the bag of frozen peas in his mouth to prevent from crying out in wake-the-dead status agony. He took some deep breaths, aware he was sweating again. 

“Okay. On the count of three, alright?” Jade said evenly, this look of utmost sincerity plastered across his face. Davey nodded, teeth buried in the freezer-tasting bag of peas, eyes wild and feral. 

“One...Two...” Jade snapped the thumb back in at two. Davey spit the bag of peas out, wrenched his hand back, and _then_ he screamed. Peas spilled out on the filthy kitchen linoleum. 

“JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST, DUDE! Are you trying to _kill_ me!?” Davey bellowed, doubled over at the waist cradling the entirety of his arm like it was a baby Jade had just threatened with a spear. Instead of defending himself, picking up the now strewn bag of peas, or telling Davey to shut up, Jade bust up laughing. Under normal circumstances Davey would have rolled his eyes or gotten pissy, but he was entirely too wrapped up in the current state of his excruciatingly injured, throbbing, swollen ugly mess of a thumb to even begin to look at Jade, so instead he hunched there, backed up against the fridge and swearing. 

Jade kept on laughing, putting some effort into containing it but not nearly _enough_. He covered his mouth, looking down at the pea-scattered linoleum. “Sorry, dude, but your _face_...It was priceless. You were so pissed off.” 

“I am still pissed off!” Davey tried to yell, but his voice came out weak. He sunk to the floor, slithering down the refrigerator like a burlap sack full of mud. “God, I feel so sick.” he mumbled, cradling his blanched face in his uninjured hand, the other one resting uselessly on his knee, vaguely reminiscent of a chunk of roadkill with its gruesome color pallet. 

“I’m gonna check the medicine cabinet for a finger splint...in the meantime, try not to throw up and ice it.” Jade ruffled Davey’s wilted mohawk affectionately as he left, and Davey growled weakly into his palm, but no one heard him. 

He remained sitting there, contemplating how on earth the rest of the household could have slept through his outburst, until Jade came back, brandishing an ace bandage and a stick of blue plastic. He grinned triumphantly, and Davey managed to return a watery smile. His ears were ringing, there was a nasty bruise swelling on his knee from hitting the floor post stage-dive, and his thumb hurt so badly he wasn’t entirely convinced he was past the threat of throwing up, but Jade was smiling at him looking all chipper despite his own injuries, so Davey tried to maintain optimism. 

“I couldn’t find a splint, so I just made one,” Jade announced, looking proud of himself. He dropped to his knees, disentangling the bag of frozen peas from Davey’s death grip in order to draw out his bad hand. He cringed when he looked at it, like he was imagining how badly it hurt. 

“You made one? How?” Davey said dumbly, imaging Jade once again donning a pink frilly apron. It was just too easy. Either Jade remembered every little thing he ever learned in Eagle Scouts, or he had an abnormally overactive maternal instincts. Davey didn’t remember Jade going to boy scouts as a kid, so aprons and wooden spoons it was. 

“Uh, I broke the razor part off of a disposable razor,” Jade said distractedly, aligning his makeshift splint up with Davey’s thumb as best as he could despite the swelling. “Hold this in place,” He directed to Davey, who obeyed and watched Jade unroll the ace bandage like a real pro. 

“Thanks,” Davey said sheepishly as Jade started to wrap his thumb gently but firmly. Davey was gritting his teeth and bracing himself against the pain, but all of that lessened a little as Jade’s lips quirked into an involuntary smile, head cocking slightly to the side. 

“No problem. You’re really stupid, but you’re fun to go to shows with. I guess I just have to keep a better eye on you next time, make sure you don’t keep moshing while your insides are coming out or anything,” Jade explained, wrapping Davey’s thumb. He tucked the final inch or so under the bandages, ensuring it was tight with careful, precise fingers. Davey’s breath caught uncomfortably. What Jade was saying was mom stuff. It was _brotherly._ The way he was saying it though? Davey wasn’t quite sure. 

There was a loaded, tense quality to Jade’s voice that made Davey’s skin prickle, made the air around them suddenly crackling with electricity. Davey’s breaths were coming in short and fast and he squirmed on the linoleum, his spine scraping against the fridge solid and humming quietly behind him. Jade’s fingers were still touching his wounded hand, and it hurt but Davey didn’t want him to let go. 

“Uh...” he said stupidly, scrambling through his mind for something right to say, something that would either put an end to or manifest this unbearable tension between their two sore, sweat-smelling bodies. “I really should shower.” Was the brilliant one liner he came up with. 

Jade blinked in response, the briefest tide of confusion sweeping his face before it was replaced with a tired indifference, the exhaustion of the show sinking into him visibly. “Yeah, you smell pretty fantastic,” he said dryly, helping Davey to his feet. Davey, meanwhile, was internally cursing himself and everyone else on the planet merely for existing. He wasn’t sure if he just ruined a _moment_ , or if he just narrowly escaped royally fucking one up. Regardless, he was currently left with a grey-green, sickened failure feeling creeping into his gut. It wasn’t a good way to feel, especially with a broken thumb. 

~*~

Davey made it to the downstairs bathroom when he realized, much to his horror, that he was incapable of undressing himself. He stared at his pale, rather queasy looking reflection in the water-stained, fingerprinted, cracked, toothpaste splattered mirror for a few minutes, trying to weigh all the options. He could opt to not shower. He was doused in beer and other people’s as well as his own sweat, not to mention a billion other bodily fluids that flew around at shows, but showering was not necessarily _imperative_. Especially considering his other option, which was to ask Jade to undress him. 

This option had its upsides. The most notable upside was that it was something Davey often fantasized about. Not in this particular humiliating circumstance, but in scores of other, more romantic circumstances that didn’t involve this dirty ass bathroom and Davey’s broken thumb. There was also the upside where he actually got clean, which was sort of a priority right now. 

However, the downsides might have been more plentiful. He was decidedly unattractive and smelly right now, and Jade would have to be all up in his business. If there was any chance they were ever going to sleep together, this would dash all future possibilities, because Davey was about the farthest thing away from sexy right now. He was in left field, hanging out with Ron Jeremy and a bus full of naked old ladies, he was so unsexy. 

In addition to this state of blatant unattractiveness, Davey’s dignity and “tough” statuses were in immediate danger of being obliterated entirely. Having Jade buckle his seat belt made him feel like a little kid. Allowing Jade to _undress him_ would make him feel like an _infant_. He imagined it, Jade pulling his disgusting, too-big shirt over his head, clucking under his breath with his tongue and wiping his hands on his pink frilly apron once the task was over, gazing at Davey in that infuriatingly condescending manner he adopted whenever Davey did something stupid. 

He stood there, contemplating this. He lifted his good arm and experimentally sniffed at his armpit, hoping it wasn’t as horrible as he thought it was going to be. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, completely wrong. He needed to shower. Cursing to himself, Davey kicked off his shoes and socks independently before plodding miserably out of the downstairs bathroom back to the kitchen, where he found Jade sitting on the counter eating a bowl of cornflakes and soymilk, gazing thoughtfully at the refrigerator with a cocked head. He jumped a little when Davey entered the room. 

“Hey, you need help turning on the water?” Jade asked, setting his cereal down. “I kind of thought of that after the fact, that your hand might not be up for it.” 

Davey stared at Jade, his innards roiling with shame. “Dude. I can’t even _undress_ myself,” he blurted, waving his useless hand in the air. “I can’t get my fuckin’ _pants_ off.” Jade blinked at him for awhile, looking borderline terrified of something, like the idea of taking off Davey’s clothes for him had the potential to bring on the apocalypse. Then the fear was gone, replaced with utter hysterics. Jade was laughing at Davey again, bent at the waist and shaking sort of laughter, beside himself. Davey glared at him, affronted. He was trying desperately to not join Jade in laughter, just to maintain the image that this was a wounding experience for him and not the subject of many sexual fantasies. It was difficult to keep from cracking up too, however, and not just because Jade’s laugh was infuriatingly contagious. Because the situation was utterly _hilarious._

Davey smiled against his will, and before he knew it he was laughing too, the sounds of their twin guffaws echoing in the otherwise sleeping house. Because his lungs and throat hurt from screaming at the show, their laughter came out strangled and wheezing, and in due time they were just sputtering and coughing and in Jade’s case, half-crying because apparently his stomach hurt, seeing as he was clutching it. He slid off the counter and was leaning against it, doubled over. Davey wanted to sidle up next to him and use his body as a crutch, put his whole weight on Jade and let him support his broken self. Instead he just hacked away through his laughter. 

Finally Jade regained his composure, wiping his streaming eyes with a tremulous hand. He cleared his throat, finally standing upright with his face split into a light-catching, unguarded smile. “Sorry,” He said, shaking his head. “But this is just....wow. I can’t believe this is happening.” The laundry room was attached to the kitchen, so Davey hobbled in there, standing expectantly next to the dirty clothes hamper, waiting for Jade to join him and take off his godforsaken pants. He held his arms up, shutting his eyes tight against the shame as Jade stood before him, snorting every once and awhile. 

“Well?! Do the honors, man.” Davey barked, feeling incredibly stupid holding his one normal arm up, next to his other arm which weighed around eight thousand pounds courtesy of the ace bandage and the swelling. Jade was taking his sweet time, and Davey dared to open his left eye just a slit, irritated. Both eyes flew open wide. Jade was standing there, face unreadable under the shadows in the dimly lit room, but his hands were shaking, one poised to grab the hem of Davey’t shirt, but hesitating.

Davey couldn’t tell what it _meant_ , that hesitation. In his minds eye, Jade got fussy and patronizing as he did this, bustling over to Davey and taking his clothes off quickly and a little too roughly, preaching all the while about seat belt safety and how Davey should have left the pit the _second_ that stage diver landed on him, yadda yadda yadda...but in actuality Jade was just standing there, holding his breath and looking scared or something. 

Davey could feel his mouth getting dry. “Jade?” He said quietly, hating how young and tinny his voice sounded. Jade shook his head, mumbling a distracted “sorry,” as he took the hem of Davey’s shirt, carefully pulling it over his head and disentangling his wounded hand from the arm hole gently, standing on his toes to do so in this way that made him lean unnecessarily close. There was that smell again, the smell that was only Jade after a show, free of any shampoo and deodorant that had otherwise melted off in the sweat of the pit. Suddenly, Jade’s hand was cupped around the side of Davey’s waist, thumb aligned with his hip-bone and feather light in touch, like he was vaguely aware that it was weird. The shirt was officially off, then, and he tossed it into the laundry with a look of mild disgust. 

“This sucks.” Davey said meaningfully, emphasizing both words fiercely. It did suck. It sucked hard, because it should have been over already and he should be in the shower rinsing his stink off, but no, Jade was making this _last_ , and he was acting _weird_ , and this was entirely too much for Davey to handle on most days, let alone the day he _busted his thumb._ Jade was prolonging his humiliation and suffering and he was not cool with it. 

“It could be worse,” Jade mused, tugging at the hem of his own shirt in order to procrastinate the inevitable act of unbuttoning Davey’s pants for him. “At least it’s me, at least it’s not, you know, _Adam_ whose being forced to take your clothes off.” 

Davey huffed an exhausted breath out, not bothering to tell Jade that he would be thrilled if it was Adam, in fact he would be thrilled if it was anyone _other_ than Jade in this position, because at least Adam would tease him properly and bitch properly and not just stand there in silence looking weird and scared while Davey and his broken-ass thumb just hung out, high and dry in really gross clothes. At least he didn’t give a shit about Adam or anyone else seeing him vulnerable or exposed or suffering at the hands of his own stupidity and irresponsibility. At least he didn’t _want_ Adam or anyone else to undress him in an alternate universe. 

“You need to unbutton my pants,” he said bluntly instead, his voice a carefully unemphatic monotone. He had to sound indifferent, because excitement and horror alike seemed too...too something. Davey didn’t fucking know anymore, he was the most humiliated wet Persian cat in all the land right now, and he just wanted to drown away his embarrassment in the shower and nurse his busted thumb properly. But Jade was still standing there, paralyzed, staring at the waistband of Davey’s pants. 

“The button,” Davey continued, pointing with an uninjured finger. “It’s right above my dick.” he snapped. 

“I know where it _is_ ” Jade defended himself, but he didn’t _do_ anything. His feet remained rooted to the laundry room floor, arms crossed defiantly in front of him. Davey was freaking out a little bit, seeing as the air had changed into that same tense, crackling energy which possessed the room only minutes ago, when Jade touched his hand too long. Davey got the distinct feeling right now that if he leaned in and kissed Jade, that Jade might kiss back. This both elated and terrified him, because up until now wanting Jade had been a constant issue, but a theoretical one. 

He tried not to want Jade too hard, because it’s unfair to oneself to waste time wanting something you can’t have. However, now that having Jade seemed a plausible reality, wanting him was skyrocketing in Davey’s mind and body, filling him completely so nothing else was left, just a dull ache in his broken thumb and _want_. 

Jade did this weird, abrupt inhalation, like he was gulping in oxygen before diving into a pool, and then his hands were at Davey’s pants, his head bent to examine the button in the low light. He struggled with it and squinted, not used to dealing with a button from this angle. The heat in the tight, unbelievably close space around them doubled, tripled, making Davey sweat along the backs of his knees and color creep up his sore neck, his palms getting damp before they got slick. He swallowed again and again, trying fruitlessly to calm the rabbiting heartbeat in his chest. Jade had been down there entirely too long, and Davey couldn't fucking _help it_ , his good hand wrenched away from his side to grip a too-fierce fist in the back of Jade’s equally dirty shirt. 

Jade immediately yanked his face away from Davey’s crotch, eyes wide in that scrawny puppy way, wet and black in the dark. Davey’s heart pounded so hard it hurt, and he could tell Jade was about to launch into a _sorry I’m making this so awkward_ speech, so he avoided said situation by blurting. “Why do you keep looking at me that way?” He didn’t mean for it so sound the way it did, but it left his lips as a low whisper, and he was faintly aware that his eyes were half lidded.

Jade swayed into him, gulping. They stood far too close, knees brushing electrifyingly and the entire world around them smelling of stale sweat and someone else's old cigarettes. Jade’s mouth opened but he didn’t say anything, just breathed unevenly, and Davey was sure this time that if he kissed Jade, Jade would kiss back. 

A myriad of half-realized, half recognizable emotions swept across the planes in Jade’s face, and his mouth was open for a few seconds before he said, “You just...look so vulnerable. Like, I could push you over and you’d just fall,” he explained ineloquently. It was a weird thing to say, Davey knew this, but was weirder was the way Jade said it. There wasn’t a single, audible trace of mocking in his words. Instead it sounded awed, quiet and delicate like Jade thought he might break something if his voice was any louder.

They were standing so close, and Jade’s hands remained on the button of Davey’s pants, right where they needed to be, and his mouth never looked so goddamn wet. Davey’s grin split his face in half then, cracking wide and brilliant in the dark and he huffed a quiet, “You should stop talking,” he didn’t entirely realize he said as they both leaned in mutually and fit their mouths together. Davey kept his fist tangled in the still damp back of Jade’s shirt and didn’t let go while they kissed messily. 

Jade tasted metallic and dirty like the loose change that rattled around in a pocket for too long, and Davey was faintly aware that this was what someone tasted like when they were nervous, when they were scared, and to make Jade less scared he whimpered a little into the wet soft slick of his mouth, and Jade’s hands clenched involuntarily on Davey’s waistband, bringing their hips flush and sore and knocking together. 

In that instant the tenderness gave way to the _want_ Davey had been battling for so long, and his back was slammed against the washing machine behind him, hitting him right above the tailbone and hurting in this far away manner. Jade was crushing him, working his knees apart with a narrow, quaking thigh as he sunk his teeth in sloppily around Davey’s lip ring. Then he was mouthing wetly down Davey’s still-sweaty neck, tongue pressed flat and searching to his quickened pulse to lap the sharp salt taste away, and Davey let his head fall back, mind closing around the solitary, comfortable word _finally_. 

“...Christ” he heard himself mumble, Jade’s kind of amazed half-laugh vibrating along the jagged stretch of his throat. His shirt was already off so there was nothing between Jade’s hands and his sticky, burning skin, so he felt the trails his hands left as Jade roughed him up. Their hips were grinding together in a borderline painful way, the bruises Davey got at the show aching in a fashion that kept making him jump and gasp and push back twice as hard.   
“Can I still take your pants off?” Jade whispered, his nose pressed tight and heat-seeking into the junction of Davey’s neck and shoulder, making the skin there break out in feverish gooseflesh. 

“Fuck yes,” Davey ground out through clenched teeth, sliding his good hand up to Jade’s filthy hair, pushing his half hard dick against him, back arched shamelessly. “Please,” He added, raking his teeth along Jade’s brow and snagging a mouthful of his hair, which was crisp with dried-sweat salt. He sucked it out, heart pounding and breath coming fierce and uneven. 

Jade unlocked their bodies for the split second it took him to unbutton Davey’s pants and pull down the fly. Davey almost made a snarky comment how quickly Jade got the task at hand done now that he had an _erection_ , but was instantly silenced by the feeling of Jade yanking his pants down over his thighs. He stepped out of them clumsily, almost falling over and breaking this _other_ thumb in the process, but the pressure of Jade’s body trapping him to the washer prevented any true loss of balance. Finally he was standing there in nothing but his boxers, hard enough to be precumming all over his boxers and groaning uncontrollably into Jade’s temple, writhing. Jade hissed against his collarbone, palm covering his hard on and rubbing. 

There was a few seconds of just being pressed together, skin hot and dirty and flush in every possible place while they shared labored breath. Time moved in slow motion for these few seconds, and it hit Davey that he and Jade were finally _doing_ shit together, and that must mean Jade _didn’t_ view him as a little brother, which meant that all of his excessive concern and coddling was actually because he cared about him in an entirely non-maternal or fraternal way. His chest was about to explode with the sincerity of this revelation, but Jade saved him from spontaneous combustion by kissing him again hard, biting his mouth and cutting off all air with his tongue. His hand then moved from groping his cock to sliding up the back of his boxers and kneading his ass, bringing their hips even closer to generate impossible heat. 

“Take them off,” Davey mumbled disconnectedly, not sure what he was talking about but rolling his hips suggestively, half-aware of the edge of the washing machine digging into his lower back. Jade hooked his thumb in the elastic of his boxers, hesitating only slightly. “I can’t do it myself,” Davey said honestly between hungry wet kisses, falling apart under the overwhelmingly rough drag of Jade’s mouth against his own. 

Jade pulled them off then with some difficulty, gasping into Davey’s mouth as he closed a fist around his dick, so wet and scalding with precum. “God, Dave...” He muttered, beside himself as he pressed their foreheads together and looked down, eyes fixed on his own hand moving in firm strokes over Davey’s cock. That undid Davey, the fact Jade was getting off to watching him get off, that he wanted to look at him. Without thinking, Davey shot his broken hand out and gripped Jade’s wrist to hold it in place, biting through the sickening jolt of agony in his thumb as he came in hot spurts onto Jade’s shirt front, eyes shut almost painfully tight over dizzying, explosive static. 

A strangled noise escaped him as he released Jade, pulling his hand towards his own body and waiting for the waves of pain to pass. Jade kept touching him as he twitched and shrank, eliciting more awful, involuntary hisses and yelps. Finally, he collapsed against the washing machine, laughing a choked laugh. He opened his eyes to find Jade’s hand in his own mouth, eyes wide and black and fixed on all of Davey, all of Davey flushed and ruined and splayed and spread on a piece of household machinery. 

“I usually last longer than that,” Davey managed to mumble very seriously, and Jade skeptically said around his own fist, “right.” Then he took his jizzed on shirt off, wadding it into a sweaty ball and throwing it into the hamper to join with and perhaps copulate with Davey’s similarly discarded shirt. Davey dragged himself up exhaustedly, finding and picking off specs of dryer lint that had adhered to his damp, sticky torso. Jade watched him intently all the while, eyes longing and unguardedly hungry in this way that made Davey wonder how he could have ever mistaken it for brotherly. 

Once Davey caught his breath, he dropped carefully to his knees, eyes locked on Jade’s while his hands rested on the tops of his thighs, thumbs aligned with the seams in his jeans and lips aligned with his hard on. Unpredictably, Jade balked, flinching under Davey’s palms. “Whoa, what are you doing?” He asked, panic detectable in his voice. He dug his fingers into Davey’s shoulder to prevent him from leaning in any closer. 

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Davey asked, sitting back on his heels, irritated at the way the fabric of his boxers was sticking to his spent dick.   
“Yeah...but...” Jade hesitated, lurching in his ambivalent way that made Davey think that he _wanted_ his mouth on his dick, but had some weird inexplicable mental reason he was pushing him away. 

“Dude! Are you seriously attempting to decline a _blowjob_?” Davey asked, mind unable to wrap around this confusing, uncharacteristic fact. “What is wrong with you?!” He used Jade’s momentary release of his shoulder to dip inwards, pressing his lips to the inside of Jade’s jeans, eyes fixed upwards on him in a questioning, incredulous stare. Jade’s composure literally crumbled. 

“It’s just...aren’t we going _fast_?” Jade asked, his fingers finding their way deceitfully into the wet cowlicks of Davey’s throughly mussed hair, pulling at in in spite of himself. Davey huffed impatiently. “You just jacked me off, what’s not fast about that?” 

“Yeah but this is a blowjob,” Jade argued, like that meant something. His erection was straining against the zipper of his pants in this visibly uncomfortable way, and Davey did the only humane thing to do in that sort of situation and unzipped them with his unbroken hand, pressing his mouth to the tiny sliver of boxers he just exposed. Jade lurched dramatically but didn’t push him away. In fact, it undid the button, seeing as Davey was clearly incapable. 

“Jade,” Davey explained impatiently, voice muffled against the heat of Jade’s almost-touchable skin. “I have a broken _thumb_. I _can’t_ jack you off okay?” his voice was exasperated, strained and needy and kind of pathetic but he didn’t care, he could smell the muskiness of Jade’s precum, he could feel the muscles of his thigh jerking involuntarily under the weight of his broken hand. “I’ll jack you off tomorrow when I can move my thumb if that’s what you really want,” He continued, and Jade was tangibly overcome by how badly Davey wanted to suck his dick, so he gave in, working his pants from his narrow hips. 

“You’re a persistent bastard,” he grumbled, shimmying out of his jeans and boxers, letting them settle around his knees as Davey scooted closer, mouth already open and wet and impossibly irresistible. Jade hooked a thumb in Davey’s lower lip, dragging him roughly across the remaining space between their bodies. “If you’re gonna do it, do it,” he growled. 

Davey didn’t waste time, flicking his tongue against the head as he gripped the base with his uninjured fist. Jade swore, cupping his strong palm against the back of Davey’s skull and holding him demandingly in place as Davey fit his mouth over his dick, sliding his lips as low as possible without choking himself, sucking and lazily tracing his tongue across the vein on the underside. Davey bobbed his head, making the occasional muted gagging sound which Jade always echoed, usually with some variation of a curse and Davey’s name. 

“Fuck, Dave...” He mumbled, placing his thumb at the saliva thick corner of Davey’s mouth, starting to jerk his hips erratically and suck in air like he was afraid the supply would run out. Davey had never given a guy head before, but he could tell from his own experiences receiving it that Jade was getting close, which made his chest swell with pride and triumph. Like every skill Davey tried his hand at, he didn’t just want to be good, he wanted to be the _best_. He quickened his pace, sliding his spit-slick lips faster, lashing his tongue clumsily. 

In a second he was being choked, salty wet fire pouring down his throat and out the corners of his mouth as Jade came, wide palms holding his head immobile and a distant groan falling from his lips. When he finished Davey pulled away coughing, throat burning and stinging awfully, but not so awfully it overshadowed the triumphant satisfaction of making Jade come. 

“Sorry,” was the first thing Jade said after he came, wiping beads sweat from his brow and helping Davey to his feet. “I didn’t mean to, uh...fuck your face like that,” He said lamely, dragging Davey’s body close to his own and studying his mouth in this calculating, _I want to kiss you but you just swallowed my jizz_ way. Davey saved him the contemplation and pressed their mouths together, his lips still swollen and stinging from sucking him off. 

“I liked it,” Davey shrugged as they parted, smiling stupidly. He was suddenly exhausted, aware of his smell and his sweat and his pain in this unimportant way that was drowned out by the feel of Jade’s grinning lips at his brow. Jade was holding him close, inhaling deep from his dirty hair.   
Davey pressed back, the angle of their post-coital huge him have to smell his own armpit, which had only gotten sweatier in the last few minutes. “Dude, I really need to shower,” he declared, cringing at himself. 

“Yeah, me too.” Jade sighed affectionately, ruffling Davey’s mohawk. They started to walk to the bathroom, aching from minor show bruises and all around stiffness, but still draped around each other and touching in all places possible. 

“You get to soap my back. And wash my hair. And dress me,” Davey listed, counting fingers on his good hand and grinning stupidly.  
“Honestly, I can’t wait,” Jade told Davey, lips at his temple. “You’re a dumb piece of shit for breaking your thumb, but at least I get an excuse to touch you.” He said, and Davey thought with a resigned satisfaction that really, Jade didn’t need an excuse.


End file.
